Been seeing a lot about how the government passes shitty laws, lot of mass shootings and expensive asf health care. I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot. Are all states is America bad ?
Depending on where you are from. No. If you live in a place where gangs can roam the street challenging the police, unemployment is 15+% and corruption is rampant. The USA will be better.
**Yes.**If you come from a place with moderate laws, healthcare and representative government the USA could be worse to much worse.
The thing is places aren’t bad because there are gangs or homeless or what old ladies in Russia like to mention - drunk people. All of them are here(or rather wgo they are) exacly because said place is terrible.
No, despite what always online Europeans who have never visited will like to tell you. We’re just very big and very vocal, so you hear about us all the time. Bad news spread faster then good news. Are you going to be reading news about how good our tap water is, our public restrooms always available, boring stuff like that? Probably not! But that’s stuff you’ll notice if you do actually visit. We also are much more friendly and welcoming then other countries. We’re also tend to be less racist because we vocally talk about our racial problems rather then sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist. I’m sure I’ll get downvoted by some people who don’t like to hear that, but they won’t be able to refute.
Edit: Why is everything America related online swarmed with Europeans trying to shit on it. It’s so exhausting and extremely pretentious. No wonder people have a distorted view of it online.
I’d say it’s hit or miss on tap water. Depends where you live and how the utilities company handles their water purification. Take Flint, MI for example.
It does, but you might not notice it since you’re exposed to the smell/taste all the time. But go abroad to Europe or some other place that doesn’t use chlorine for drinkwater treatment and you’d be surprised when you get back how noticeable it is.
I’ve lived in several states and visited over 20. LA has the worst tap water, but most places are pretty good. Larger cities tend to taste worse than medium cities and rural places.
Same, I’m used to Swiss tap water (I know, sounds like cheating) and the water in America always smells like bleach. You have to get used to it, it’s probably because of the added fluorine. It’s still safe to drink. Can’t say the same in other countries around the world. Even in Germany and Italy, that’s Europe, you should avoid drinking from the tap.
In houses, yes. But public fountains I’ve found in Germany have often the sign Kein Drinkwasser on them. Meanwhile in Switzerland, almost every public fountain is 100% safe to drink.
Things maybe have changed in the recent years, I see you’re on a German instance and I guess you’re German, so I trust your statement more than mine as a foreigner.
Our tap water is in crisis. What hasn’t been privatized is either being operated with outdated technology, or being polluted, and EPA protections are being weakened by the Supreme Court.
And, in most of America there aren’t freely available public restrooms. They are all located in businesses that will outright deny you access, or force you to make a purchase. Their policies allow them to discriminate against the unhoused, and the disabled.
I am an American, but I’m not going into I get into the broader discussion here, just had to respond to your two points, as they don’t seem grounded in reality.
I guess the one argument for “public restrooms” is rest areas along major highways and restrooms in public (usually national or state, not little municipal) parks.
So we do have public restrooms…they’re just nowhere near 99% of the population most of the time.
That depends on the state/municipality. In my hometown there were zero public bathrooms available. That’s since changed because only really wealthy boomers can afford homes there so more businesses have them.
Even when you CAN do this, it’s usually because the employees are either kind enough or inattentive enough to let you do this. And if you are clearly unhoused or poor, your chances of being able to do this are much, much lower than if you can fit in in a middle class white area. (Restaurants with predominantly poor clientele or many homeless people nearby tend to be much stricter about this.)
In Switzerland, you have to pay $2 to use the restroom in gas station. But I totally prefer using those compared to the sanity standard of your average american gas station. I can be picky.
Public bathrooms are accessible to those that contribute to society.
Not saying this is right, it’s just how it is. Even places that have a “purchase policy” don’t care, the policy only exists to keep problems to a minimum and is usually only enforced against those that look like they might cause problems.
YOU have never been TOLD a gas station bathroom required a purchase. Likely because you pulled up in a vehicle and look normal enough. But I’m willing to bet money if you wander up on foot and look homeless you’ll find out they actually do have that policy.
I’ve been on all sides of this. As the strung out homeless kid that just wanted a quiet warm “nice” place to do my drugs. Then the struggling young adult having to wash blood, hair and literal shit off every surface in there. And then the manager having to enforce these policies because if I don’t my employees (or myself) have to go deal with whatever problems are created in the bathroom (and the WILL be a mess to clean up 98% of the time).
Furthermore, what part of the country are you living in that leads you to believe we are less racist than other countries!? Our racism has defined our country ever since it was created.
Seriously, I am curious what part of the country you live in? It is sheltered from most American realities
I look asian. I experienced more racism traveling through Europe for 6 weeks than I have living 15 years in the US (primarily Atlanta and Jacksonville).
Thank you for the actual sane take. I swear people on Lemmy are actually worse than Redditors when it comes to shitting on America. It is extremely obnoxious.
A good way to get an impression about real america as an outsider is to follow smaller hobbyist YouTubers from middle sized towns. One guy from Michigan I follow has a remarkable boring life that’s completely different from every American stereotype.
Michigan poisoned an entire mid sized city. Its the home of mercenary leader Erik Prince. His sister is married to Dick Devos who runs the largest pyramid scheme in the world. There are Dow Chemical dump sites all over the state leaking heavy metals into waterways. Jeffrey Epstein got his start at Interlochen Arts Academy, the highschool had a dormitory named after him for years.
As an European, I was tempted to downvote you. But not because your very valid points but because you started your whole speech by stating defensively that only people who never been to the US tell bad stuff about America, that’s unfair.
I have relatives in the US and I’ve been there for several occasions. Except the midwest and Texas, I’ve been in most of the States and, it’s true, America is like 50 different countries.
But on average, what I can say is that I love interacting with Americans, speaking with them it’s like talking with some old friends, even in NYC (known by other Americans for being very un-american) I found friendlier people than in my home country. Kind of ironic that the only bad chats with Americans happened online.
I’ll skip about the tap water, it’s probably excellent, but to me born and raised in Switzerland, it always tasted like bleach, probably because of the added fluorine, I don’t know. It’s still better than tap water in UK, Turkey and half Europe and by far safer than most of Asia and Africa.
Finally, visiting America as a tourist is great, and I dreamed of living there as a child, but as an adult, I feel safer and more taken care in Europe, both from a healthcare point and from labour safety. But I live in a privileged country, if I lived anywhere else in the world, I would still chase the “American dream”.
What really saddens me about America, while the people are great, the nature is amazing and the spaces are immense, is that is governed by corporations and bribes and make shows like House of Cards a documentary.
There’s a lot of Americans who aren’t having a great time here. I don’t think negative commentary about the US is one hundred percent Europeans’ fault. Nor is it just that we’re “vocal” about things, which is really a positive since it’s the only way to create change anyway.
For example. I just saw a local news story that cops in a major SoCal city are arresting/citing/fining people for just…being homeless. They want them to go to shelters, but they admittedly don’t create enough shelter space. So it just becomes illegal for certain people to exist. The city gets pissy and aggressive about homelessness being a problem, when they’re the ones who created it and are the ones who refuse to fix it. Sure, give a homeless person a record so that it’s even harder for them to get jobs and approved for an apartment, and then fine them knowing they can’t pay it, resulting in doubling late fees that put them in debt. Sounds they really care about fixing the issue, great fucking job. But think about that - it’s against the law, it’s a crime, to not have a mortgage or rent payment. I’ve been hassled by cops for sitting in my own car in a grocery store parking lot. There is no public space. You have to buy something to be allowed to exist outside of a park, and in coastal places like SoCal, you have to pay to be in those too. And yes this was in one city, but it’s applicable to almost every major city in the US, even if there’s some variations in local laws. It’s just an example of how disposable human beings are here. The minute we don’t have labor to sell, the minute we stop consuming, we’re thrown the fuck away. And that’s not just an economic issue, it’s a cultural issue as well.
Canadian living in America, and I hate it here. It’s not pretentious to say that America fucking sucks, because living in American cities objectively fucking sucks.
Tell me you’ve never been outside your city without telling me you’ve never been outside your city.
A lot of US cities have really suspect lead pipes (Chicago, for one) and in general the water quality is highly dependent on the age of your building.
A shocking number of US cities also run their pipes through chemical spills (like Pasadena) and dilute the pollutants to below the legal limit.
A large number of “public washrooms” are tucked behind “please purchase to use” signs, even if they are de facto public washrooms.
The US has been shockingly and incredibly open with it’s racism in a way that other countries lack. Being from East or Southeast Asia is just begging to get screamed at in some neighborhoods. My fault for not being one of the “right” minorities, I guess.
Every state has its good and bad. We are out of control with the gun thing. There is a higher chance you will get shot and killed while minding your own business in America than most other countries. We are selfish and not much unity unless you are on one side or there and even then, we have become stupid and gullible. We are violent. We are much more violent in general than anyone I have ever encountered in other countries. Maybe England, but even there, it is not the same. Americans have no problem straight up killing each other. We are getting worse.
Is America great? Depends on who you ask. Is America a place where you still have some opportunities to make a better life for yourself. Sure. But it is not the same as that the pamphlet sold to everyone else. We are far from perfect and in many cases, other countries do things better.
Having said that, it is cool. Just keep your eyes open and pay attention.
To all and every non-american - the only reason you’re ever told that America is great, is because it is being compared to, to where you are now. America is NOT everything though. It’s got it’s own problems.
The only reason I didn’t get financially destroyed by the accident I was in, was just because the driver who struck me off my bicycle was 100% at fault and there was no denying it. You can try to say I served in front of you but at the end of the day you struck a bicyclist from behind on the road.
Anyways, because of laws on how much you can sue for I was capped out. So I didn’t get a ton of money but thankfully they also were forced to cover all my medical expenses along with the payout, which would have easily bankrupted me even with really good insurance if I had to pay that back.
And America can’t be bothered to build safe bike lanes. I refuse to ride my bike on the road. Anyone who doesn’t like me riding on the sidewalk can fuck off
The problem is you’d have to tear up a shitton of infrastructure to do it because built-up areas have no room to extend road widths safely to accommodate bike lanes. The driver behind that problem (pun intended) is the car culture and lack of public transportation. They can’t get rid of car lanes to hand them over to walking/biking dedicated areas because there’s too many cars and people that rely upon them to get around. There would never be enough people that would vote for or support such a project. Rural areas DGAF and are too poor to build bicycle infrastructure.
It’s not that we can’T be bothered, it’s the usual problem of Americans not wanting to pay for anything that they don’t use themselves or that might inconvenience them even though it’s good to get cars off the roads and keep people safe.
It's disingenuous to say rural areas are too poor to install public transportation. It's that there's too much to install (too much space) for any given user. Just economics of rural areas. It doesn't make sense unless we can significantly reduce the capital investment and running costs of public transport.
Not baseless, data-driven. This isn’t, like, my opinion, and this is the reason it’s illegal for adults to ride on sidewalks in many municipalities.
There are more obstacles on the sidewalk, and sidewalk is more prone to be uneven. Most bicycle accidents aren’t bike vs. car, but now vs. environment: unexpected bumps or drops, debris, obstacles like poles and tree branches.
But the real problem is visibility. People step out onto sidewalks not expecting a speeding cyclist, risking collisions. But more importantly for your safety, motorists aren’t expecting you there, either. So when you are going across intersections, they cannot see you –because you’re in the wrong place, and because as you point out, there are streetlights and sign poles and other objects between you– and may turn into you .
so the only case these apply are when the cyclist isn’t paying attention to their surroundings… which is the real reason it’s dangerous, and when you eliminate that, I would rather have bikes passing next to people than cars passing next to bikes, because the latter is actually deadly when someone does make a mistake
Of course you can’t predict the future, and neither can motorists. What you can do is ride at a speed reasonably slow enough that you can react to people, and you can ride on the side of the pathway further from the doorways.
And like I said already, a bike on person accident at slow speed is favorable to risking my own life or life-changing injury by riding in the street.
If you’re trying to change my mind, stop trying. For anyone reading this, petition your local government to build safe bike lanes with solid barriers and we won’t have to have this argument.
I just wanted to speak a bit towards that website. I think that specifically what it is trying to argue (with extremely varying degrees of good arguments) is that all these social and economic changes can be traced back to the United States ending gold convertibility in 1971. I say the arguments are of extremely varying degrees because as has been pointed out here, some things like crime are trends that stretched back into the 1960s, some things like deregulation more properly start around the 1980s, and even something like inflation is complicated by the fact that it was already rising in the 1960s, and was drastically impacted by things like the 1973 and 1979 Oil Shocks.
The decision on August 15, 1971 is often referred to in this context as removing the US dollar from the gold standard, and that’s true to a certain extent, but a very specific one. It was the end of the Bretton Woods system, which had been established in 1944, with 44 countries among the Allied powers being the original participants. This system essentially created a network of fixed exchange rates between currencies, with member currencies pegged to the dollar and allowed a 1% variation from those pegs. The US dollar in turn was pegged to $35 per gold ounce. At the time the US owned something like 80% of the world’s gold reserves (today it’s a little over 25%).
The mechanics of this system meant that other countries essentially were tying their monetary policies to US monetary policy (as well as exchange rate policy obviously, which often meant that US exports were privileged over other countries’). The very long and short is that domestic US government spending plus the high costs of the Vietnam War meant that the US massively increased the supply of dollars in this fixed system, which meant that for other countries, the US dollar was overvalued compared to its fixed price in gold. Since US dollars were convertible to gold, these other countries decided to cash out, meaning that the US gold reserves decreased basically by half in the decade leading up to 1971. This just wasn’t sustainable - there were runs on the dollar as foreign exchange markets expected that eventually it would have to be devalued against gold.
This all meant that after two days of meeting with Treasury Secretary John Connally and Budget Director George Schultz (but noticeably not Secretary of State William Rogers nor Presidential Advisor Henry Kissinger), President Richard Nixon ordered a sweeping “New Economic Policy” on August 15, 1971, stating:
““We must create more and better jobs; we must stop the rise in the cost of living [note: the domestic annual inflation rate had already risen from under 2% in the early 1960s to almost 6% in the late 1960s]; we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators.””
To this effect, Nixon requested tax cuts, ordered a 90-day price and wage freeze, a 10% tariff on imports (which was to encourage US trading partners to revalue their own currencies to the favor of US exports), and a suspension on the convertibility of US dollars to gold. The impact was an international shock, but a group of G-10 countries agreed to new fixed exchange rates against a devalued dollar ($38 to the gold ounce) in the December 1971 Smithsonian Agreement. Speculators in forex markets however kept trying to push foreign currencies up to their upper limits against the dollar, and the US unilaterally devalued the dollar in February 1973 to $42 to the gold ounce. By later in the year, the major world currencies had moved to floating exchange rates, ie rates set by forex markets and not by pegs, and in October the (unrelated, but massively important) oil shock hit.
So what 1971 meant: it was the end of US dollar convertability to gold, ie the US “temporarily” suspended payments of gold to other countries that wanted to exchange their dollars for it. What it didn’t mean: it wasn’t the end of the gold standard for private US citizens, which had effectively ended in 1933 (and for good measure, the exchange of silver for US silver certificates had ended in the 1960s). It also wasn’t really the end of the pegged rates of the Bretton Woods system, which hobbled on for almost two more years. It also wasn’t the cause of inflation, which had been rising in the 1960s, and would be massively influenced by the 1970s energy crisis, which sadly needs less explaining in 2022 than it would have just a few years ago.
It also really doesn’t have much to do with social factors like rising crime rates, or female participation in the workforce. And it deceptively doesn’t really have anything to do with trends like the US trade deficit or increases in income disparity, where the changes more obviously happen around 1980.
Also, just to draw out the 1973 Oil Shock a little more - a lot of the trends around economic stagnation, price inflation, and falls in productivity really are from this, not the 1971-1973 forex devaluations, although as mentioned the strain and collapse of Bretton Woods meant that US exports were less competitive than they had been previously. But the post 1945 world economy had been predicated on being fueled by cheap oil, and this pretty much ended overnight in October 1973: even when adjusted for inflation, the price essentially immediately tripled that month, and then doubled again in 1979. The fact that the economies of the postwar industrial world had been built around this cheap oil essentially meant that without major changes, industrial economies were vastly more expensive in their output (ie, productivity massively suffered), and many of the changes to make industries competitive meant long term moves towards things like automation or relocating to countries with cheaper input costs, which hurt industrial areas in North America and Western Europe (the Eastern Bloc, with its fossil fuel subsidies to its heavy industries, avoided this until the 1990s, when it hit even faster and harder).
" I know the gold standard is not generally regarded as a good thing among mainstream economists,"
I just want to be clear here that no serious economist considers a gold standard a good thing. This is one of the few areas where there is near universal agreement among economists. The opinion of economists on the gold standard is effectively the equivalent of biologists’ opinions on intelligent design.
Hey, thanks for the post. Interesting. I didn’t even realize that the website was anti-going off the gold standard. I just really focused on the increasing wealth inequality and that bummed me out.
They explain exactly what the site was created for, though the post was not present 10 months ago. I’m not sure if I know enough about economics to understand whether they believe what Kochevnik81 was guessing they believe, that the getting off the good standard was bad for the economy.
What drove you to create the site? What has been the most surprising outcome?
The inspiration for creating the website was born out of pragmatism. That is to say, the data was collected with the a priori assumption that abandoning the Bretton Woods agreement lent an unprecedented and unaccountable agency to nation states (particularly the United States thanks to the US dollar’s position as a global reserve currency) in their ability to expand money and credit.
The Austrian position upon which our a priori assumptions are based is as follows:
That expansion of money and credit sends artificial signals to the market which breed malinvestment leading to an ultimate deflationary credit & money contraction when the malinvestment liquidates(Austrian business cycle theory).
Nation States (and particularly the United States) have an unfair advantage over capital markets in their ability to unilaterally capture seigniorage through the issue of new currency while simultaneously debasing the real value of their debt and liabilities as the nominal supply of money increases.
Point 2 leads to a top down redistribution of productive capital accumulated by private industry to the public sector which is often redirected to frivolous and/or unprofitable ventures.
The pragmatic usefulness of the website (for me personally) was merely having the data all in one place where I could simply refer a person to the data to quickly and easily demonstrate the many downstream effects of fiscal and monetary expansion (as based on the Austrian positions I outlined above).
The idea to turn it into a meme rather than a financial blog (or something of that kind) was born out of a desire to foster a reaction of socratic self discovery in the viewer. It is far more important to me that the viewer walk away with the right question rather than with what I believe is the right answer…What the F*** happened in 1971?
America is wealthy as all hell regardless. It is part of the reason things like Healthcare is so expensive: there’s a whole lot of economic power to siphon up as an insurance company.
Honestly, no. People bitch a lot but I’ve lived here a lot of years, my healthcare is fine, despite owning several guns I’ve never seen one fired at anyone, and I can pretty much do whatever I want.
Just a few million homeless, hungry, and incarcerated, plus the exploitation of workers in poorer nations, and you can be pretty ok with how things are! It’s a great system
Last I checked, US had like 20% of the world’s prison population. Just absolutely insane, plus prison doesn’t exactly rehabilitate anyone, so people just end up back in it
Well, when a good chunk of your prisons are for profit, and there is no system to incentivise reform, then it makes sense. They don’t want to kill their business.
It’s bullshit though. Prisons should be paid based on how many of their inmates successfully rehabilitate.
Some states are better than others. Washington is a better state than Alabama. New York is better than Florida. California is better than Texas. There’s a trend here: the states where the ruling party institutes at least European social democracy-lite are the best to live in.
Cannot be overstated — the US is huge, and the difference between one state and another can dwarf the difference between two European countries. Same de facto language, same currency…but that’s about it.
I don’t think you understand how much of a difference it makes to speak another language.
You are far less likely to marry someone with a different language or move somewhere with a different language. From what I read on the internet, Americans move between states several times in their lives. That is a very equalising factor for the culture and general way of life. There’s much more exchange and assimilation if there is constant mixing.
How a French person and a German person view life, work and public conduct can differ greatly. And the differences won’t be equalised soon, because of the different languages and therefore less mixing.
Surely the states have differences between them, but you have one traditional Thanksgiving dinner nationwide for example.
What an Italian considers a traditional Christmas meal would not be considered “christmassy” in Finland.
On the political sphere, there are constitutional monarchies, presidential republics, parliamentarian republics, oligarchies and dictatorships in Europe. Personal freedom and safety might differ greatly. But even within the EU, where personal rights are more or less equal there are still so many cultural differences. At what age you move out, how prestigious it is to go to university, if cooking at home is a great value.
Even architectural trends are different in each country.
Not to diminish the diversity in the US, but two different countries is just another level.
Sorry, didn’t mean to diminish diversity across Europe. The point I was trying to make is that the cultural difference between two extreme ends of the US is…well, extreme, and that you could find two regions of Europe, in different countries, that felt more similar. Not at all suggesting that if you pick two random locations in the US and in Europe that the US will be “more different.”
For example, the US state of Louisiana has about the same fraction of Louisiana-born residents as Switzerland has Swiss-born.
America definitely has its issues, but I think we have historically been good about surfacing problems and making sure they’re at least talked about publicly, even if they’re not fixed. This probably makes it look worse than it is. I feel like even in countries with reasonable free speech, there can be social taboos against talking about certain things.
I’ll echo this. My understanding is that compared to other countries, Americans are willing to share our lives with strangers. Now, apply that to politics. As a country, we’re very open about everything.
form communities due to being more spread out and car centric.
It’s also just not a community type of country. There’s a huge emphasis on individuality here. I think to the point where it flies against human nature. I have a hunch that that’s why we have so many cults. I’d ask a sociological organization but I’d rather not because I’d rather go my own way.
Nothing is ever so black-and-white when it comes to talking about the state of the USA right now. Yes, we are still comparitavely well-off when stacked against developing nations, but we have unique problems that are a real sore spot for many that aren’t getting any better and nobody is addressing them, letting the wounds fester.
For example, we have a lot of poverty. Sure, our lowest of the low class probably still enjoy a lifestyle better than that of someone from a remote village in some far away corner of the world, but the promise of prosperity is not equally accessible and the idealized “middle class” is vanishing rapidly. Homelessness is a crisis in basically every large city, especially in the warmer parts of the country, and inflation is still not under control which means the cost of living is going to be unsustainable for a lot of people very soon.
If you put politics aside, things really aren’t as bad as they could be, but that doesn’t stop people from voicing their concerns that things aren’t as good as they could be either.
and we were also first in line for things like the COVID vaccine, because the companies could make so much of their profits here…
We were first in line because the US government paid billions to fund the R&D to get the vaccine out. Then when manufacturing started in limited supply it went to the highest bidder first, which again was the US. We paid for it twice . I think that kind of thing should not be patented, we the people paid for the research and development, and the pharma companies got all the profits. If other companies and countries were allowed to manufacture the vaccines, we would have squashed COVID much faster.
It’s very car centric outside of maybe New York City.
There’s a lot of racism. There are probably still sundown towns. You should go read the new Jim Crow.
The police are dangerous and often useless.
One of the two major political parties doesn’t believe in government, and tried to overthrow the government. They’re still considered legitimate.
The day to day life in most places is fine though. You almost certainly have power and clean drinking water. With at least one notable exception, on water, but not enough people cared to fix that promptly.
Your comment lacks a bit of experience/awareness about what’s out there. The US is huge, you’re going to find different experiences in different places. Your statement about New York being the only mass transit city in all of US is not true. My vacations to Seattle and Washington DC I had no car, went all over the city by bus and train, easily.
Vacation is the key word there. Living is different, because the services you’ll need aren’t necessarily available. We now have stopgaps for certain areas if you aren’t poor, like delivered groceries, but good luck in Seattle and Washington DC if you aren’t at least upper middle class.
I’ve also spent time in Europe using the public transportation you’re using to set the bar and Seattle and Washington DC are on par. I’m sure (hope) that some other US cities are there too that I haven’t visited. Both of those cities have stops or stations throughout the whole city and suburbs. City stops are usually around a 5 minute walk to anything and the suburbs were 15 min walk at worse. Connecting routes to get across town easily. Routes were frequent in busy areas during the day. I didn’t see anything offered in Europe that isn’t also available in these US cities with usable public transportation
I was being a bit hyperbolic, but most places in the US require a car for long term living. A vacation isn’t really representative of living somewhere full time with a job and errands.
I could get anywhere in the city quickly and cheaply at any hour of the day or night, surrounding suburbs included. Routes at least every 15 minutes or less along busy routes during the day. It would have been much cheaper if we were residents with yearly passes. We had backpacks to lug our stuff around, if you needed to bring more you could bring a small cart. It’s not as convenient as a car, buts it’s public transportation same as any city in Europe. I’ve also spent time in London and had an identical experience. What do you think busses and trains in Europe offer over the ones in good US cities? When I needed to get an hour out of London, I needed a car too
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